The family of Elijah McClain is demanding that the case against Aurora Police officers Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Randy Roedema be reopened. Elijah McClain was killed last year after being forcefully medicated with ketamine during a struggle with Woodyard, Rosenblatt, and Roedema. The name of the paramedic that administered the ketamine is Peter Cichuniec. A competent paramedic would not inject a patient with drugs without checking for potential side effects including conflicts with current medications and allergies before administering the shot unless the life of the patient depended on immediate treatment. By granting the officer's request, this Cichuniec violated hippocratic oath and should be prevented from practicing medicine.
The coroner conducted an autopsy and concluded that he could not determine a cause of death. He also said that the amount of ketamine in McClain's system was therapeutic. The amount being therapeutic does not change the fact that it should not have been administered in the first place. McClain suffered a heart attack in the ambulance after being sedated and was pronounced brain dead three days later. Any officer that asks a paramedic to force medicate a patient should be fired and held accountable for side effects. Paramedics need to be trained not to cooperate with law enforcement if asked to force medicate a suspect.
The Stop
If you watch the embedded video below you will see that Elijah liked to wear a ski mask in public for some reason. He walks into a convenience store, buys something, and leaves while customers laugh because they thought he might be a robber. When walking down the street with his purchased merchandise he was stopped by Woodyard for being "suspicious" even though nobody had accused him of committing any crimes. Elijah appears to obviously suffer from some kind of developmental disability when he tenses up and says "I am an introvert please respect the boundaries that I am speaking, I am going home." The officers start to use force and one of them says to the other that McClain reached for his gun, but the body cam footage does not show if that is true one way or the other.
This author knows from experience that police officers often shout out various things during use of force incidents that are designed to make it sound like the subject is behaving worse than he really is. They do that to make the use of force sound justified. When taking a subject to the ground they often yell "stop resisting" whether or not the subject is really resisting or not. This is often combined with "focused blows" which is a police terms for beating up a subjects by repeatedly punching them. The statement about the gun is probably due to either Elijah accidentally touching the gun, accidentally moving his hand in that direction, or something the officer is just saying so that when the body cam shows him attack Elijah it sounds justified. The end product usually ends up being body cam footage rendered almost useless by the officer moving too fast, being too close to something, or the environment just being too dark. Often all that is left is audio of officers yelling stuff like "stop resisting" or "I need backup." In this case it appears that a developmentally disabled person did not respond well to aggressive physical contact initiated by the officers for no justifiable reason.
These types of encounters are notorious for transforming law abiding citizens into violent criminals. That is because courts do not allow people charged with resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer to plead not guilty on the grounds that they were not guilty of the crime they were being arrested for. In this case McClain was not even accused of a crime, but he did not react well to being assaulted by officers. Had he survived they would have probably charged him with resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, and attempting to steal the officer's gun. McClain would not have been able to plead not guilty on the grounds that the stop was unlawful because courts have ruled that the only legal response to a wrongful arrest is cooperation and that they can't allow people to feel free to assault police officers just because they are being wrongfully arrested. That is the opinion of the courts and not us. This author personally learned this the hard way after an encounter with campus security guards during college. In that experience I was stopped based on an accusation that never led to a conviction but was convicted of assaulting the officers by kicking and spitting on them during the arrest. I just did not respond well to that treatment kind of like Elijah didn't, but Elijah did not strike anyone like I did. The law needs to be changed so that people that beat their underlying charge do not end up with a criminal record anyway just for defending themselves from a wrongful arrest or just flipping out because they are being wrongfully arrested. That of course raises the question, should a person that knows they are innocent be entitled to use force against police to protect their person from wrongful imprisonment? We believe that they should under certain circumstances because if people were allowed to defend their freedom from wrongful arrests by any means necessary that police would be less likely to arrest people unless they knew for sure that they were in fact guilty. This right to defend one's self would have to be limited to cases in which the officer making the wrongful arrest is the same officer that is knowingly bringing the false charge. Under the new law unsuspecting officers serving warrants would not be subject to self defense because they have no clue if someone is guilty or not, but an officer that fabricates a charge would have to worry about their victim lawfully defending his or herself if he decided to wrongfully arrest them. That would allow people like Elijah to plead not guilty to the charge of assaulting an officer by reason of self defense from a wrongful arrest.
Eventually one of the officers puts McClain in a choke hold similar to the choke hold that killed Eric Gardner. The hold rendered McClain unconscious and they were able to put him in handcuffs. He then says "my name is Elijah McClain, I was going home. That's what I was doing. I was just going home." He also pleads "I'm just different that's all... I'm sorry." In the video at 3:45 the officers can be overheard saying that they don't have anything on him besides being suspicious. At 4:50 officers are overheard saying that when the ambulance gets there they are going to have them give McClain ketamine. That statement proves that the police and not paramedics were making treatment decisions.
McClain was found without a pulse, resuscitated, and pronounced brain dead three days later. No charges have ever been filed despite clear video evidence showing that the officers caused his death. Every possible cause suggested by the coroner would not have happened had the officers not stopped and used force on an innocent person that did nothing more than act suspicious. We don't think the officers intended to kill McClain, but we do think that his death is their fault. They should be charged and those charges should at least include manslaughter.
"Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight they go to jail, it's called manslaughter." Brad Pitt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlUuNg6PEXA)
UPDATE: According to the media, Aurora Fire Rescue Lt. Peter Cichuniec admitted being the one that ordered the ketamine (https://kdvr.com/news/problem-solvers/ambulance-report-suggests-fire-paramedic-gave-too-much-sedative-to-a-man-who-later-died/). Cichuniec defends his use of ketamine saying that he was treating McClain for "excited delirium." The problem with that is that at no point does he claim to have looked into McClain's history for possible preexisting conditions, conflicting medications, or allergies before administering the drug. It also appears, from media reports, that Cichuniec gave McClain way too much ketamine and has been using environmental factors that may have made it harder to guess his weight as an excuse. Maybe Cichuniec should consider not administering ketamine at all if he is not absolutely 100% sure how much the patient weights.
In the video on this page https://kdvr.com/news/problem-solvers/exclusive-video-shows-interviews-of-officers-involved-in-aurora-altercation-city-notified-of-incoming-civil-suit/ attorney Mari Newman makes allegations similar to the ones we wrote about before finding this article. That the cops just make up stuff like "he is going for your gun" to justify excessive force knowing that the body camera footage probably won't disprove their accusation. She also named Cichuniec because like we said he should not have given McClain ketamine.
The name of the paramedic that actually administered the ketamine was Jeremy Cooper but we think that Lt. Cichuniec is more to blame because he authorized Cooper to administer the drug. That to use infers that Cooper sought guidance from a more experienced medial professional and only went ahead when that superior ordered him to administer it.
UPDATE: Someone was nice enough to give us a link to the letter written by the District Attorney describing why he would not file charges. More names are in that. Will update later. For now see PDF icon above this article.
That document names everyone already mentioned plus:
Detective Matthew Ingui
Firefighter Daniel DeJesus
Firefighter Austin Bradley
Fire Medic Ryan Walker
Dr. Stephen Cina
District Attorney Dave Young
Public records reveal a lot about the killers including several places that might be of interest to protesters demanding justice. Those records are as follows:
NATHAN SCOTT WOODYARD
MALE
DOB: JUL-1989
AGE: 30
Recent Address History:
6350 S HAVANA ST APT 918
ENGLEWOOD, CO 80111-5658
Full Name: Nathan Scott Woodyard
Original Job Title: Patrol Officer Ii
Job Title: Patrol Officer
State: Colorado
Employer: City Of Aurora
Annual Wage: $68,162
Monthly Wage: $5,680
JASON GREY ROSENBLATT
MALE
DOB: NOV-1988
AGE: 31
Recent Address History:
9009 S YOSEMITE ST UNIT 204
LONE TREE, CO 80124
2016 - Now
9019 S YOSEMITE ST UNIT 2603
LONE TREE, CO 80124
2017 - 2020
Full Name: Jason Rosenblatt Gr
Original Job Title: Patrol Officer Iii
Job Title: Patrol Officer
State: Colorado
Employer: City Of Aurora
Annual Wage: $61,305
Monthly Wage: $5,109
RANDY MARTIN ROEDEMA
MALE
DOB: AUG-1982
AGE: 37
2664 E 131ST PL
THORNTON, CO 80241
2017 - Now
Owner
11205 HOLLY ST
THORNTON, CO 80233
2012 - 2020
Full Name: Randy Roedema Ii Ma
Job Title: Patrol Officer
State: Colorado
Employer: City Of Aurora
Annual Wage: $74,859
Monthly Wage: $6,238
PETER STANLEY CICHUNIEC
MALE
DOB: OCT-1972
AGE: 47
7198 S PARFET CT
LITTLETON, CO 80127-5807
Full Name: Peter Cichuniec S
Job Title: Fire Lieutenant
State: Colorado
Employer: City Of Aurora
Annual Wage:$87,479
Monthly Wage:$7,290